Kairos SA letter of support for the 28 September launch of the Coalition for a free Palestine (South Africa)

More than 18 months ago we hosted Kairos Palestine in South Africa. During that visit, they expressed the desire that Palestine solidarity groups in South Africa should all unite if we wanted to give effective support to the struggle of the Palestinian people. More than any other group, they value and treasure the support from South Africa.

We committed ourselves to work and pray for such a united front in South Africa, and today we therefore give our full support to the launch of Coalition for a Free Palestine. During this year we have also engaged with the ANC on the need to fully support justice in Palestine and even urged them to show the documentary “Roadmap to Apartheid” in all their branches, since it is also about our history and could be of tremendous educational value.

As you know, the struggle against apartheid was fought on many different fronts, and one of the most intense was the struggle within the church. Those who supported apartheid risked being isolated from the entire Christian community, but the more intense struggle was the struggle against those in the Church who favoured “reform” rather than real change in South Africa. The Kairos document exposed this theological hypocrisy and in time, and as repression worsened, most Church leaders began to see that apartheid could not be reformed.

Those who today support Israeli apartheid through their support for “Christian Zionism” need to be similarly exposed, but more importantly, those Christians who support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine through their silence also need to be challenged. We have pledged our support for the work of Kairos Palestine and we are supporting them in various ways not only in South Africa, but across the world. For this reason, we are beginning to see the Christian community throughout the world taking a stand against Israeli apartheid, and this will only intensify in the coming years.

We therefore salute all those who have worked hard towards this launch, and we pray God’s blessing upon the work of the CFP. Long live CFP, long live!